Wikipedia:Peer review/Pythia/archive1

Pythia

Pythia has been placed on the list for Peer reviewed status, as I think it is of FA status now. Would like others to make a comment on how it could be possibly improved. John D. Croft 15:49, 5 March 2007 (UTC)[reply]

Review by Awadewit

This is a very informative article and I greatly enjoyed reading it. Here are my suggestions as you move toward FA.

I would suggest that you have the League of Copyeditors WP:LoCE go over this page or a trusted wikipedian copyeditor. There are many awkward, vague and grammatically-incorrent sentences. In general, the prose could be tightened up.
Try to eliminate one-sentence paragraphs by either expanding the paragraph or integrating the sentence into another paragraph.
To achieve FA status, you will more than likely need more sources. They seem to have a rule of thumb of at least one source per paragraph, but it is always better to over-source to protect yourself during the FAC process. You have an excellent list of references on the page, so I assume that adding the inline citations will only be a matter of time.
Descending into her chamber, she mounted her tripod seat, holding laurel leaves and a cauldron of the Kassotis water into which she gazed. Nearby was the omphalos, the navel of Earth, flanked by the two golden eagles of Zeus, and the cleft from which emerged the sacred pneuma. - why is this a bulleted point?
Although you direct the reader to the list of "Famous Oracular Statements", you might also include one or two examples in the article itself in case he or she doesn't bother to click.
In the lead you mention that The oracle is one of the best-documented religious institutions of the classical Greek world. Writers who mention the oracle include Herodotus, Euripides, Sophocles, Plato, Aristotle, Pindar, Xenophon, Diodorus, Strabo, Pausanias, Plutarch, Livy, Justin, Ovid, Lucan, and Julian but you have very few quotations from these writers. Might you include a few more to add flavor to the article and to give the reader a sense of the ancient view of the Pythia?
Is the Pythia important after the decline of Greek civilization? Does she have any social or cultural resonance that you could discuss? If not, you might discuss the demise of the worship of Apollo and the destruction of temple or something that would round out the narrative.
Again, for FA status, small details like the following will have to be attended to: 1) The article must consistently be in either American or British English (I saw both); 2) The article must have a consistent citation style (I saw parenthetical and inline); 3) An effort must be made to rid the article of red-links (either by creating pages or de-linking); and 4) The bibliographic references must all be cited in the same style. Awadewit 03:57, 8 March 2007 (UTC)[reply]